As of: March 18, 2024, 6:30 p.m
By: Tobias Gmach
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The fire brigade placed oil barriers and so-called oil ex-cubes, which absorb the harmful liquid, into the water - including where the Georgenbach flows into Lake Starnberg.
© Dagmar Rutt
Oil from a previously unknown source flowed through half of Starnberg on Monday.
The fire brigade counteracted the pollutant with barriers in Siebenquellebach and Georgenbach.
In the afternoon a thick film could be seen at the mouth of Lake Starnberg.
The police are investigating.
Starnberg - It happens every now and then that some motor oil ends up in the groundwater after a traffic accident.
However, the amounts of oil that flowed through half of Starnberg on Monday were extremely remarkable.
Eyewitnesses and nose witnesses like Gregor Schmidt noticed a “pungent, mineral smell”.
“It smelled like a gas station,” said the coordinator of the trout pond management at the Fisheries Institute.
He hadn't discovered anything oily in the ponds; Schmidt had been informed by the fire department just in case.
What happened?
In the morning, citizens noticed clearly noticeable oil streaks in the Siebenquelle and Georgenbach streams.
They informed the authorities.
The Starnberg fire department and the Tutzingen fire department specializing in such incidents were alerted.
They worked until the afternoon and searched the streams for the possible culprit.
The police were unable to determine this on Monday either.
The next few days will show whether it will be successful.
According to the Starnberg inspection, an official complaint is being made under the Bavarian Water Act.
Official notification in accordance with the Bavarian Water Act
Josef Fichtl, operations manager of the Starnberg fire department, reported a “thick film” in the afternoon.
This film was also easy to see because the emergency services had set up a total of six oil barriers on the streams, one of them where the Georgenbach flows into Lake Starnberg.
These are red, snake-shaped structures that collect the oil floating on the surface of the water.
In addition, so-called oil ex-cubes, which absorb the nature-damaging liquid, were added to the water.
Operations manager Fichtl expects that the barriers will remain in place for the next few days for safety reasons.
The amount flowing in the streams decreased over the course of the day, Fichtl said.
From this he concluded that the source had dried up again.
But where is she?
“It smelled like engine oil,” said the operations manager.
The only thing that is relatively certain is that it is oil.
According to Fichtl, test strips from the fire department worked.
The district office and the water management office were informed as water supervisors.
Water samples were reportedly taken.
However, the Starnberger Merkur could no longer reach the water management office on Monday by the time of going to press.
In any case, the evaluation will probably take a while.
To prevent misunderstandings and possible theories: The foreign liquid in the Starnberg streams has nothing to do with the so-called tracer tests that the State Building Authority recently announced.
The authority wants to use a colored marker to gain insight into the flow behavior of groundwater.
However, the tracer tests have not yet been carried out, explained Dominik Spitzeberger from the building authority when asked.
In addition, the dye cannot be seen in water with the naked eye - but only in the laboratory.
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By the way: Everything from the region is now also available in our regular Starnberg newsletter.
You can find even more current news from the Starnberg district at Merkur.de/Starnberg.